Rick Brown
Rick Brown is a director of CPI Strategic, a government relations consultancy which provides strategic, policy and communications advice. A lawyer by training, Rick Brown began his career in Papua New Guinea’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
He then spent ten years working for the Victorian branches of the Federated Clerks’ Union, which included two years as the waterfront organizer, and then the Federated Ironworkers Association, which subsequently amalgamated with the Australian Workers Union, with which he was the Chemical Workers’ Branch president and an advocate. In the late 1980s and 1900s he served as the director of a think tank, the Council for the National Interest, which identified medium and long-term domestic and international challenges facing Australia and was established by a group of eminent Australians including Sir Arvi Parbo, Peter Henderson, Sir Charles Court, Dame Leonie Kramer, Laurie Short and Bob Santamaria. He was the founding editor of a specialist quarterly journal, Australia and World Affairs.
In 1999, Rick became the Victorian director of the No Republic campaign. He personally devised the Vote No to the Politicians’ Republic slogan; played a significant role in the development of the national strategy; edited the No Case papers which underpinned the strategy and secured an unexpected majority No vote in Victoria. Between 2000 and 2002 he worked as an adviser to Russell Savage, one of the three, lower house Independent MPs who held sway during the first term of the Bracks Government in Victoria. In 2004, Rick joined the staff of Senator Nick Minchin and, after the election, joined Kevin Andrews’ staff.
Rick was actively involved for many years in the affairs of the Anglican Church in Melbourne, serving on various committees including the committee responsible for identifying and short-listing candidates for the position of Archbishop of Melbourne on two occasions.
Articles by Rick Brown:
13 March 2024
5.5 MINS
A significant proportion of Ireland’s population may think that enough is enough and that they have more urgent things to worry about than an élite ideological agenda.
19 January 2024
54.8 MINS
Professor Carl Trueman has observed that, in an era that has psychologised the individual, freedom of speech is often viewed as part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
30 March 2023
4.6 MINS
What are people to make of the Victorian Liberals now that they have rescued their leader, lawyer John Pesutto, from his self-inflicted crisis by blaming it all on Upper House member Moira Deeming and suspending her from the parliamentary party for nine months? Ms Deeming [...]
23 March 2023
2.9 MINS
John Meynard Keynes is remembered as an influential economist. However, he was also a philosopher, a fact of which his following famous observation in the final chapter of The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money is a reminder: ‘The power of vested interests is [...]
6 February 2023
23.7 MINS
An in-depth analysis of Australian politics during the last few decades of societal upheaval and economic woes. What values and principles guide our major parties? In 1999, Australia conducted its largest taxpayer-funded focus group -- the referendum on a republic. Voting in the referendum was [...]
